the county. That report explained that eight miles of wall in Starr County, which taxpay- ers and donations would bankroll, weren’t permitted to cost more than $162 million. In June, according to an update on the Texas Facilities Commission’s website, the first 1.7-mile section of the wall was “still undergoing the final installation of gates, road work and lighting.” That figure hasn’t changed since, according to Francoise Luca, a communications specialist at the commission. In a recent update, the governor’s office said Texas had raised more than $55 million in funding for the barrier as of Sept. 12. A migrant family waits after being processed in May 2022 in Roma, Texas. Brandon Bell/Getty Images the governor had authorized DPS and Na- tional Guard “to respond to this illegal immi- gration by apprehending immigrants who cross the border between ports of entry or commit other violations of federal law, and to return those illegal immigrants to the border at a port of entry.” By Abbott’s own stated logic, in other words, he’s returning migrants to the very fed- eral authorities he claims are releasing them. Deterring migrants? Abbott has boasted that Operation Lone Star marks a serious deterrent for those who hope to cross the border into southern Texas. On Sept. 21, the governor posted an update on Twitter, claiming: “As Biden fails, Texas continues to secure our border.” In recent months, the governor has posted a slew of updates tallying how many migrants have been arrested or “returned” to the border. On June 21, the governor wrote on Twit- ter that Texas remained “prepared to deter crossings at any point along our border.” A week later, while announcing a Texas National Guard effort including patrol boats on the Rio Grande, Abbott said: “The pur- pose of the river boats is to ‘prevent, deter and interdict’ illegal immigration. … This in- cludes attempts to turn back migrants pre- paring or attempting to cross the river.” In July, Abbott made an even more eye- brow-raising claim during an interview on Fox News. “We’ve turned back tens of thou- sands of migrants who tried to get across the border, and we denied them even coming across the border,” he said. How’s all that deterrence coming along? Not so hot, according to the Texas Tribune. In a recent report, that outlet noted that bor- der apprehensions in August totaled 116,976, marking a roughly 6.87% increase when compared with March 2021, the month Ab- bott announced Operation Lone Star. Migrant buses working? Earlier this year, Abbott announced an ex- pansion of Operation Lone Star that in- volved buses carrying migrants to sanctuary cities around the country. To date, he’s sent migrant buses to D.C., New York and Chi- cago, using the opportunity to accuse Demo- crat mayors in those cities of hypocrisy. Last month, the governor’s office said it had sent more than 10,000 people north on such buses. Human rights organizations and advo- cacy groups have described the buses as a dangerous political stunt that reduces mi- grants to pawns in the governor’s beef with Democrats. But Abbott and many Texas Re- publicans, including U.S. Rep. Dan Cren- shaw and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, have defended the move. At the Conservative Political Action Con- ference in Dallas in August, Abbott tackled criticism head on by issuing a promise to the mayors of D.C. and New York City. Speaking to the audience, he vowed: “I’ve got one thing to tell you and to tell them: There are more buses on the way as we gather at this conference today.” Earlier last month, the governor upped the ante once again, sending two busloads of migrants to be dropped off outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in D.C. Bragging of the move, he promised to “continue sending migrants to sanctuary cit- ies like Washington, D.C. until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border.” But the buses might not be achieving what the governor claims. According to data recently published by Syracuse University, sending migrants to cities like New York City, in fact, only increases their chances of remaining in the U.S. for a longer period. Building a wall? At an event in June 2021, Abbott announced that Texas would build its own wall on the state’s border with Mexico. Citing what he described as the Biden administration’s “open-border policies,” Abbott unveiled a list of migration-related measures he in- tended to implement. There, he announced that the state Legisla- ture had approved more than $1 billion of funds for border security. “Border barriers will be built immediately,” he said, adding that he’d officially announce “the plan for the state of Texas to begin building the border wall.” In December, Abbott traveled to Starr County to announce that Texas had built around 900 feet of border wall. The news outlet Border Report noted in March that around 1.6 miles of the wall had been built in Stoking anti-migrant hate? Since Biden came to office, Texas Republi- cans have ramped up the same anti-mi- grant playbook that Trump used for years. Abbott has adopted increasingly harsh rhetoric against migrants, accusing them of spreading COVID-19 and pinning the blame on them for the country’s fentanyl problems. Critics have pointed out that Abbott had lifted Texas’ mask mandate and opened the state for business around the same time he lashed out at migrants over COVID-19. In a report last month, the Cato Institute noted that more than 90% of fentanyl sei- zures took place at official border crossing points or during vehicle stops inside the country, while U.S. citizens made up some 86% of convictions in fentanyl drug traffick- ing cases last year. Those facts are at odds with the suggestion that migrants are to blame for the overdose epidemic. Meanwhile, rights groups and activists have accused Abbott of normalizing hate speech against migrants, pointing to the governor’s description of the border crisis as an “invasion.” On Fox News in July, host Maria Barti- romo asked Abbott, “Is this an invasion?” Abbott launched into a longwinded expla- nation of all the problems he said stemmed from the border crisis. Finally, though, the governor concluded: “So, yes, we do have an invasion driven by the cartels coming across our border that are pouring people into our country at unprecedented levels.” Abbott’s critics point out that the “inva- sion” rhetoric echoes language tied to the great replacement conspiracy theory, the same kind that appeared in the manifesto of the white nationalist shooter who killed 23 people in an El Paso Walmart in August 2019. Kate Huddleston, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, told the Observer that “invasion” rhetoric was “fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hate” and “contributing to a volatile atmo- sphere.” ▼ COURTS ON THE RUN E A PROCESS SERVER CLAIMED TEXAS AG KEN PAXTON FLED AS HE TRIED TO SERVE HIM IN A FEDERAL LAWSUIT. BY JACOB VAUGHN rnesto Martin Herrera walked up to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s door last Monday morning with subpoenas in hand. When a woman answered the door, Herrera told her he had important legal documents for the attorney general, accord- ing to a federal affidavit obtained by The Texas Tribune. Paxton couldn’t come to the door, the woman told Herrera, because he was on the phone and in a hurry to leave. The woman identified herself as Angela. Paxton’s wife is state Senator Angela Paxton. Herrera gave the woman his card, sat in his car and waited at the Paxton residence for about an hour. That’s around the time a car rolled up to the house and pulled into the ga- rage. Out of the vehicle stepped Ken Paxton. “I walked up the driveway approaching Mr. Paxton and called him by his name,” Her- rera said in the affidavit. “As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage.” The attorney general’s wife later hopped in and started the vehicle. A few minutes passed before Ken Paxton ran from the home and darted toward the car. Herrera wrote in his affidavit that Ken Paxton was trying to avoid him, even as he yelled the at- torney general’s name and said he had legal documents to serve him. When Herrera figured Paxton wasn’t go- ing to stop to take the documents, he yelled to him again, saying he was being served and left the papers on the ground. Paxton has been under indictment for seven years for securities fraud and is facing a whistleblower lawsuit accusing him of abuse of office. But the documents left out- side of the attorney general’s home were re- lated to another matter. They’re part of a lawsuit filed against the state by nonprofits wanting to help Texans pay for abortions where they are legal. The subpoena was for a federal court hearing last week. Fund Texas Choice, the North Texas Equal Access Fund and several other groups are behind the federal lawsuit. In their suit, the groups are asking the court to keep the attorney general and prosecutors from en- forcing House Bill 1280 “in a manner that vi- olates Plaintiffs’ rights to freely travel, freely associate, freely speak, and freely support members of their communities through fi- nancial assistance, as guaranteed by the United States Constitution and federal law.” Under HB 1280, it’s a second-degree fel- ony to be “a person who knowingly per- forms, induces, or attempts an abortion.” This can be increased to a first-degree in- fraction “if the unborn child dies as a result of the offense.” The groups want to be legally protected to raise money and help people get abor- tions out of state. The same day he was served, Paxton tried to have the affidavit sealed, arguing in a court filing that Herrera “loitered at the At- torney General’s home for over an hour, re- peatedly shouted at him, and accosted” him and his wife. U.S. District Judge Robert Pit- man allowed the affidavit to be sealed, but that was hours after it was published, ac- cording to The Texas Tribune. Since news of the affidavit broke, Paxton has taken to Twitter to defend himself, say- ing Herrera is lucky he didn’t use force. He first responded on Twitter to The Texas Tribune’s report on the affidavit. “This is a ridiculous waste of time and the media should be ashamed of >> p8 7 dallasobserver.com CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS DALLAS OBSERVER OCTOBER 6–12, 2022
